...I guess I ought to weigh in on the whole Prop 8 thing.

Let's get a few things out of the way.

First of all, I'm not a law-talkin'-guy, so I'm not really qualified to opine on the merits of the judge's legal reasoning.

Secondly, I voted yes on Prop 8. I'll tell you why in a minute.

Third, I'm a straight guy, but I'm not married, and it's unlikely that I will be anytime in the near future, if ever.

This is gonna be kind of long, so I tucked the rest below the fold...
I'm of two minds on the subject of same-sex marriage.  On the one hand, over thousands of years, marriage has been defined as a union between a man and a woman.  If the state has been involved in approving that type of union, some argue, it is because it strengthens the family unit, which is the basic, most stable unit of society.  A man and a woman who commit to each other for life and raise children (if they choose to do so) is the traditional basis of most societies in general, and ours in the Judeo-Christian west in particular.  There are laws that have been in place for thousands of years, and they've worked, for the most part.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that the state has any business being in the business (if you will) of marriage.  Matrimony, for most of our history, has been a matter of faith.  And not just religious faith, either, but the faith that two people have in each other.  Why should the state be able to say that I'm not allowed to enter into that kind of compact with whoever I want to be with (so long as the other party can legally consent or the union wouldn't harm anyone else—marrying children or animals being examples of the former, and marrying close family members, where incest could result in deformed offspring being an example of the latter)?

There's another thing that's bothered me (rightly or wrongly) about opponents of same-sex marriage.  For a long time now, gays have been portrayed (again, rightly or wrongly) as promiscuous, and it has always struck me as odd that some of the same people (yes, I am speaking in broad generalizations here) who would make that argument, would turn around and say that homosexuals shouldn't be able to settle down with one person for the rest of their lives.  I'm not even talking about gay adoption here.

I voted for Prop 8.

After thinking about all of these considerations, a bunch of judges who aren't accountable to the people of California decided that a man and a man or a woman and a woman had the right to marry.  This had never been the case before.  This was a dangerous precedent.

When appointed judges make the laws, the will of the people means little, if anything.  When those judges find that a right that has never existed before now exists, what right will they guarantee next?

And there are two ironies here:

1) The initiative process that resulted in Prop 8 was the brainchild of the ancestors of today's "progressives."

2) The black and Latino voters who turned out in droves to vote for Teh Won also voted overwhelmingly in favor of Prop 8.

Posted by: Sean M. at 01:52 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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